Sunday 15 November 2015

Auntie Norma

Past lessons in my creative writing course supplied a Scrabble board with ten pseudo-random words. The challenge was then to incorporate those words in your own piece of writing. On my Android tablet, I play a type of Scrabble game "Cross Craze Free" (highly recommended!), and I thought it would be interesting if I could fit a complete game's worth of words in a piece of writing. This is the result.

Auntie Norma - Cross Craze Challenge

Those who were aware of her at all knew her as Auntie Norma. She could be found in the early part of Wednesday evenings, sitting in the window of that fast food place on Moor Lane, usually making a good job of devouring a plate of fish and chips. I met her one particularly busy night when we had to share a table and we got talking. Thereafter, it became a regular event.

She told me how she’d been involved in Chinese medicine and how there was an art to each potion she’d mix. I even learned the meaning of ‘qi’ beyond its use as a potential high scorer in Scrabble.

The best stories were of her youth, and I recall her description of the time in the States when she’d been loaned a jeep by a character she only knew as “El Capitan”, a member of the Nu-Theta-Kappa fraternity house at the neighbouring university. She had used it to drive to a dance hall at the other side of town. This is how she described the following events:

I remember it was in the late Sixties, and most of my friends were spending time with the guys who were on leave from Vietnam exchanging naval duties for dancing frugs and other dances of the day.

I’d paired up with a sailor called Ed, an ox of a man who had seemed really nice. It started to change once he’d had a few drinks. He started to reveal his ill-bred nature by talking dirty, and I was looking for an avenue of escape when this weedy chap walked up to our table and said “Hi. Ed, isn’t it? If you can’t refine your behaviour, perhaps you should go away and have a kip.”

He appeared so inept that I expected Ed to paste him, but nothing happened. Zilch. Instead of fireworks it was just a damp squib; Ed pushed himself up onto his feet, and then he walked away, his legs stiff-like. He appeared to be leaving a wet trail in his wake.

The weedy chap examined Ed’s seat before sitting. He placed a wax effigy on the table and nodded towards the doorway where Ed was disappearing. “There’s always some leakage,” he said, and beamed the widest smile I’d ever seen.

He told me how he’d studied with a Yogi on the Indian subcontinent, spent some time learning about voodoo in the West Indies, and made secret pacts to learn what his own future holds.

The music and the hubbub around me seemed to diminish to a series of drones. The only clarity was in his voice. He had won my complete attention.

“I was told I would meet my future wife being harassed by a large sailor in a dance hall.”

Re what followed; suffice to say, I still owe El Capitan one jeep.